Taiwan’s Innolux looks to invest in India with Hon Hai

Taiwanese panel display maker Innolux Corp is looking at investing in India to expand into the subcontinent with its biggest shareholder and key supply chain client Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, a senior executive said.

“Currently Hon Hai is talking with India about a bunch of things and we have participated in some of the talks,” Innolux chairman H.C. Tuan told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Monday.

“We are very willing to go with Hon Hai.” He didn’t detail with whom or where the talks were going on.

“If we go, it will not just be one location in India,” Tuan said, tipping India’s west, particularly its northwestern region. This area is more developed in terms of high technology and it is where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is from, he said.

Tuan said there would be issues of finding local partners and clients if Innolux were to enter India by itself. Hon Hai, which goes by the trade name Foxconn, owns about 8 percent of Innolux through direct and indirect holdings.

In late May, Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou told Reuters that his company, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronic products and the key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, aims to develop 10-12 facilities in India, including factories and data centres, by 2020.

Foxconn is the latest tech powerhouse to set its sights on the world’s second most populous nation. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi in March announced plans to begin manufacturing in India.

Xiaomi sources a lot of its components for its mobile phones from Taiwanese companies, including those in the Foxconn group of companies.

“From our perspective, we won’t set up our own manufacturing. We will do it in contract with our partners. We are talking to Foxconn and others,” Manu Jain, head of Xiaomi India told Reuters. “The factory here will be like a captive. The partner will have some sort of agreement that they recover their costs.”

Gou said at that time that in addition to Chinese brands, Foxconn was aiming to cooperate with Indian companies such as Micromax Informatics.